The Eight Year Long Transition
by thelandofthenutty
Summary: Set during Transition. The part that was missed out. Donna and Josh, but most of the dialogue was between Sam and Donna. The part I always wanted to see. Read and Review.


A/N: This is set in the episode 'Transition' after Donna and Josh speak in the hallway. Its the much needed scene when Sam and Donna see each other again. But never fear- Its totally Donna and Josh. Its based on that cool sort of relationship that two characters always have which sort of reads 'I know Im going to be the best man at you wedding some day and until then I'm going to sit back and watch the ride.' anyway, enjoy!- Jess

Disclaimer: not mine.

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Donna gave a sigh, and watched as Josh continued down the hall way, swaggering with even less vigour than he had traditionally had on even his least energetic days, his head downcast, but his fists clenched, alert, attentive, his mind obviously moving faster than he needed it too, his walk swift, but his entire person completely worn out. She groaned. How many times had she seen him run himself into a rutt and throw a nutty? Way too many to count. How many times had she seen him get this bad? Never.

It wasnt as though he didnt have reason to, however.

Donna knew that he would be under a hundred times more pressure now. More pressure than even the campaign entailed. The funny thing about campaigns was that you found yourself looking at election day as the finsihing point, when it was really only the starting line. It was a bad way to see it, but it was inevidable. They were in the race now, and Josh was falling apart.

Donna knew if she tried she might be able to make him see reason. To calm him down a little. But she wasn't going to go there again. They were closer than ever, in many ways, and yet she wouldn't let herself become what she used to be- tailing after him, her sole purpose to take care of Josh Lyman. She was her own person now. It was funny how, through leaving, she had only made it easier for them to get to where they were. If she hadn't left a year ago, then she had no doubt that she would be following Josh down the hall right now, answering the phone that was ringing on his hip, and carrying more papers than should be physically possible. She wouldn't be deliberating over whether she wanted to be White House Deputy Press Secretary or the First Lady's Chief of Staff. She would already know what her White House time card would read- Donna Moss, Senior Assistant. She would be helping for the rest of her life.

And Donna wasn't about to let herself go there again.

That had been why she had given him the four weeks. Looking back at it all now she probobly shouldn''t have added that one more pressure onto his already imploding head. He was trying to staff a people to hold onto a world that sometimes seemed to be looking so much better, and others seemed to be crumbling to pieces. And yet she had gone and told him that they had four weeks, or else nothing was ever going to happen.

And what happened at the end of four weeks? Well, Donna hadn't thought that far yet. Perhaps she moved on with her life, finally found a man that wasn't Josh Lyman.

Or maybe, the more likely situation would ensue- she would make sure there was an intern on the First Lady's Staff whose sole responsibility it was to sit in the West Wing all day and Night and make sure that the Legislative Director wasn't trying to get in the Chief of Staffs pants.

Four weeks. Why the hell had she given him four weeks? She didn't want to keep waiting around, sure, but she had waited for seven years, an extra five weeks would have killed her?

Donna groaned, turned on her heel, back the way that she had came. She was going to look for Josh anyway, to tell him what Helen had offered her, and now that she'd foiund him she was kind of ashamed that she'd run straight to him. After what she'd said that morning she could hardly afford to be clingy. Then again, they had had a great night...

_Ooff!_

Donna had been making her way through the crowded aisle of the transition office her mind somewhere else entirely, and run smack into somone holding a lot of paper.

Donna looked to her feet to see Sam Seaborn sitting there, having tumbed into her, white sheets of paper foated down around his head like giant snow flakes. Donna exclaimed an apology, and she barely registered who it was that she had bowled over, until she did a double take and her face broke into a grin.

"Sam!"she cried, holding out a hand and hauling him to his feet, laughing. "You came!" She pulled him into a hug, and Sam smiled, a little more nostalgic than he had been since he had arrived, and hugged her back.

"Donna!"he said back, in greeting. Then he held her at an arms length. "You look great."he added, with a Sam sincerity that made Donna smile.

"We've missed you here." Donna told him, truthfully, bending down to help him pick up his papers, and being reminded of a moment in their third year, with Josh, when- argh! Why was it that she couldnt perform a simple act like picking something up off the ground without thinking back to Josh in her mind? "Seriously, have you seen how nutty-"

"Oh yeah." Sam replied, without even hearing the end of the sentence. Who else would she be talking about. "Who do you think landed me with so much paperwork that I didn't notice bumping into you?" he said, letting a disgruntled noise escape his mouth, and then grinning.

"Come on, lets go talk down the hall. They have good cupckaes." she explained, smiling, and taking his papers, plonking them on her desk.

"But Josh wanted all that stuff-"

"Come on Sam, Josh is just lucky you came, you can afford to get a drink with me."she said, feeling a little bitter towards the entire Josh Lyman enterprise at that particular moment.

Sam nodded, not wanting to argue with Donna. She was obviously in a mood about something.

Donna led Sam down the hall, and they sat at a table with high stools and swivley chairs.

Sam looked at Donna for a very long time.

"You know if I hadn't seen you on tv in the campaign then I probobly wouldn't have recognised you." Sam told her, honestly. Donna laughed. Then she tilted her head to the side.

"You think I've changed?" she asked, curious. She didn't actually know what she wanted the answer to be.

Sam nodded.

"In a good way, or..."

"It seems to be a good way. Unless you've also changed to be a murdering sort of madwoman who stashes her victims in wells or something that I haven't discovered yet. Because those sorts of changes would probobly be bad ones."

"Do you think if I hadn't changed then Josh would have-" she stopped, short. She had been thinking aloud, really. She had always found it amazing how she and Josh and CJ and Sam and even sometimes Toby would say things that they thought, barely meaning to, when in the others company. She surposed it showed how much they all told the truth, at least to their friends. When there were so many people they weren't allowed to trust then they had to trust those they did even more.

It hadn't gone away. Sam looked up from the muffin he seemed to be studying with an absent minded intent with a very peirced interest.

"Josh would have what?" he asked, letting the muffin roll from his hand and onto the plate again.

Donna raised her eyebrows. She stammered for a moment.

"Would have hired me...again..." she tried, a little scepticality creeping into her own excuse, almost as though she were asking it as a question, rather than trying to lye to one of her oldest friends.

"Donna..."

"Would have what? I dont know what to say Sam, I dont know what to say, and he doesn't know what to say, and for two people who always talk way too much we're doing a lot of not saying an awful lot." She said, with a quick fury.

"Wow. So, are you and he finally..."

"Finally? What do you mean by finally?"

"Finally together?"

Donna sighed. That was the whole problem she didn't know. Maybe they'd screwed it all up. They had done everything out of order. As far as relationships go they were already more dysfunctional than anything she'd ever known. They had gone from coleeges, to friends, to enemies, to coleeges, to friends, to sleeping together, to whatever place they were in now, and they hadn't spoken about it at any point along the way. However, if anyone knew this, then in was the man sitting before her. He probobly saw it more than Josh did at the moment.

"I dont know what we are."she told him, truthfully. "Together, not together, half together. Hell Sam, I've never known what we were. I could never work it out! I spend every other night at his place, and we cant deny that theres something anymore, but we cant be together, because we dont have the time at the moment, and I dont want to commit because if we stuff this up now, then we've screwed up seven years worth of a pretty good thing, and neither of us have a great track record when it comes to relationships."she said, laughing ruefully. Sam laughed as well, but was silenced by the look on Donna's face.

"Do you think Josh would have..." Sam turned Donna's words from earlier over and over in his head, and then he looked up at her, in the eyes, giving it to her straight, as he understood what she had meant with what was surely meant to be only incoherant muttering.

"Do you think Josh would have still wanted to be with you?" he said, not really asking, because he knew that this was it. Donna didn't answer, just stirred her half empty coffee, for something else to look at rather than the raw truth in Sam's eyes.

"You honestly think that Josh hasn't been in love with you all along?"he asked, unable to keep the smile from seeping into the lyrics of his words, and his head shakng in disbelief.

"I surpose your ignorance is understandable. You're not the one he was whinging to every time you had a date. You're not the one he was ranting to whenever you tried to set him up with another woman, you not the person that saw him sink into sullenness whenever he started thinking about how you might be coping with something, or not telling him something, or slipping away from him. You're not the poor guy who had to hear his best friend start crying over a terrorist attck half a world away, and you didn't hear the hollwness in his voice when he called me saying you'd left." Sam said, rattling off without even thinking, watching Donna as she forced her eyes away from her spoon and up to his face.

"Trust me Donna. Hes not doing this because of who you are this week, or this year. He's doing it because hes'madly in love with you, and he can finally tell you without being ashamed of it." he finsished, a small smirk playing with the corners of his mouth.

Donna stared at him for a long while.

"He's worn out."

"I can tell."

"Not in a Josh way. In a more than Josh way. He's stretched more thin. He's anti delegation."

"Not if we're judging this by the amount of crap he handed me."

"Thats because its you." Donna replied, fairly. This made Sam smile.

"You know I didn't really miss it till I walked in there and heard the buzz."

"Sure you did. You flew here didn't you?"

Sam paused.

"You have a point." He said, he edges of his mouth curving upwards at the thought. He was going back to the White House. He knew it, then. He never thought he would- or at least not as an administrator. He always had what seemed unattainable dreams of returning there as a senator, or a Congressman, but this was what he loved, and he was going back.

Then he sobered, slightly. There was going to be alot of things different this time around."

"Donna, does anyone speak to..." Sam trailed off. Donna tilted her head to one side, and then bit her bottom lip, in a brief moment of hesitation. Figuring, after a split of a second, that when Josh told her to tell under any circumstances, that Sam asking, or not asking, woul not have been in the equation. Donna took a packet of sugar from the table, and scribbled down a number.

"Here." she said, handing it to Sam. "Call him. You're not the only one who does, we just cant talk about it here." she said, smiling. Sam looked momentarily stunned, before he grinned.

"Of course. The last line of the speech in California reeked of-"

"Exactly." She said, laughing lightly. She knew what he was thinking.

"It wont be that different you know." she said, unsure of it herself. It was good to be different, of course, but it was also one hell of an eight years. Sam nodded.

"What about you?" he asked, curiously. "What are you taking up when you get to the White House? Josh better not be..."

"I'm mulling." she said, with an almost shy grin. She hadn't taken the job yet, but she knew she was going to. How could she turn it down?

"Well?" Sam asked, intrigued.

"The First Lady Elect just asked me to be her Cheif of Staff." she explained, beaming. Sam mirrored it.

"That's brilliant! It's perfect!" he said, taking a bite of his muffin, and pausing for a moment. "What do you mean mulling? You'll take it, right?"

Sam asked, amazed.

Donna paused for a moment.

"It feels...dont you think its..." she looked away, and then back at Sam. She was feeling self conscious. As though she was aware of every part of herself. "...Dont you think I'd be a little out of my depth?" she asked, finally getting out the words, and hoping that he understood. It wasn't that se was feeling sorry for herself. It was that she was afraid of getting to the first day of the job and finding out she wasn't at all cut out for it. She was qualified for nothing. She had done nothing but assistant work until a year ago. How was it that she could take a job like that? Sam, however, was shaking his head.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, with the hint of a laugh in his voice. "You mean you haven't realised your worth this past year? I thought you got it Donna. You're good at this. You always have been." he said, smiling. Then he stood, and opened the door for the two of them to head back up the hall to the office. They were almost there, just walking in the door when Sam paused.

"Wait, what did Josh say when you told him you would be working with him anymore? I cant imagine he'd take not seeing you every day as well as-"

"**You want to know how you get to NOT be an assistant? By doing it GREAT!"**

The voice of Josh Lyman came echoing down to meet the old friends, and they gave each other a look, Donna's concerned, and Sams more stern, and detirmined.

"I'll take this one." he said, giving her a bracing smile. "I think we owe you a few of these anyway Donna." he adde,d allowing himself to laugh, before moving forward, taking the blackberry from Otto, and turning to face the new Chief Of Staff.

Yes it was going to be different. But it was going to be just as amazing.

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A/N: hope you enjoyed this. Please leave me a review! I reply to them all, and I'll check out your stories, just write to me! thanks for reading, toodles- Jess 


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